FROM THE ARCHIVE OF: The TV Room
The 7.25pm BBC One Northern Ireland junction.
Video content
[00:00:00] PROGRAMME: the final minutes of an edition of Watchdog.
The presenters are Anne Robinson and Alice Beer. We also hear from reporters Johnathan Maitland, John Nicholson, Sam Oakley and Andy Webb.
[00:02:31] PROGRAMME PROMOTION: for Crimewatch UK.
Presenter Jill Dando previews this month’s programme which airs on Tuesday at 10pm.
[00:03:01] IDENT: the standard BBC One Northern Ireland symbol is used to link into Comic Relief: the Launch.
Note the non-sync transition between the trail and the symbol. This is because the junction is being controlled from BBC Northern Ireland’s Mini Con continuity facility.
Mini Con was a second analogue continuity facility, with a fraction of the capabilities of the main TV Con suite. It was commissioned by BBC Northern Ireland in the mid-1990s so that live local junctions could be executed on both channels simultaneously.
BBC Scotland and BBC Wales meanwhile already had two fully equipped TV continuity facilities at this time.
Mini Con was used regularly on Thursday evenings. The local political programme Hearts and Minds was broadcast via TV Con on BBC Two Northern Ireland at 7.30pm.
In Mini Con, another local announcer/director could put out local junctions on BBC One Northern Ireland at 7.30pm and 8pm, whilst TV Con was tied up with the local programme on BBC Two (where junctions also occurred at 7.30pm and 8pm).
TV Con did have the ability to broadcast on BBC One Northern Ireland and BBC Two Northern Ireland at the same time. But it couldn’t cater for live, simultaneous local junctions on both channels.
One drawback of Mini Con was that all sources on the desk were non-sync. So, any source put to air by the local announcer/director resulted in a visible picture/audio disturbance.
[00:03:09] PROGRAMME: the first few seconds of Comic Relief: the Launch. It’s included here purely so that we can show the non-sync cut from the symbol to the programme, due to the limitations of BBC Northern Ireland’s Mini Con continuity facility.
RELATED ARTICLE: you can view Comic Relief: the Launch in full here.
RELATED ARTICLE: you can view the junction that followed this one here.
Acknowledgements
PICTURED: BBC One Northern Ireland ident. COPYRIGHT: BBC.
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